McCann says Brexit is an example of chickens coming home to roost for undemocratic EU

Foyle People Before Profit MLA Eamon McCann.

Staff Reporter

Published:16:58Updated:17:07Friday 24 June 2016

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People Before Profit MLA Eamonn McCann says the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union is an example of the “chickens coming home to roost” for a “Corporate and increasingly undemocratic Europe.”

The Londonderry MLA said: “From an Irish point of view, one of the most interesting passages in David Cameron’s statement this morning came when he said that, ‘We must now prepare for a negotiation with the EU. This will need to involve the full participation of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments...’

“We are entitled to take the reference to ‘full participation’ literally. No matter who replaces Cameron as Prime Minister, this pledge has been made and will stick.

“How the North is represented in the formulation of a negotiating position, by whom and on the basis of what mandate from the Assembly and from the people, is a question requiring a serious debate - which should start now.

“We have to get away from the idea that we will be mere spectators as Tories in London and bureaucrats in Brussels sort out the future. We must make ourselves participants.

“People Before Profit will be making the case for an exit not just from the EU but also from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, intended to consolidate the grip of multinational companies on every European economy.

“The trade union movement should make the case for leaving TTIP behind, for ditching European competition laws which prevent the use of state funds to bail out businesses where jobs are threatened, for abandoning the neo-liberal austerity policies imposed across the EU – even at the expense of crushing democracy, as we saw in Greece last year.

“These aspects of the EU were scarcely mentioned in the main campaigns across the water – because the Boris Johnson and the David Cameron are equally committed to policies which favour the rich at the expense of the poor.

“There is no need for the pessimism and near panic which seems to have descended on many this morning. There is no inevitable outcome here. It’s all to be fought for. We repeat the slogan we put forward during the referendum – in or out, the fight goes on.”